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Public Perceptions Matter
A Procedural Justice Study Examining an Arrestee Population
by
Jensen Cody Jorgensen
A Thesis Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree
Master of Science
Approved June 2011 by the Graduate Supervisory Committee:
Justin Ready, Chair
Michael White Charles Katz
ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY
August 2011
i
ABSTRACT
Research has shown that the manner in which people are treated in their
interactions with agents of the criminal justice system matters. People expect
criminal justice officials to treat them fairly and with honesty and respect, which
is the basis for procedural justice. When people are treated in a procedurally just
and equitable manner they will view the system as legitimate and will be more
likely to voluntarily comply and cooperate with legal system directives. People
who have personal or vicarious experiences of unfair or unjust interactions with
the legal system tend to view the system as less legitimate and are less likely to
comply and cooperate when they have contact with representatives of the system.
This study examines a random sample of 337 arrestees in Maricopa
County, Arizona who have been interviewed as a part of the Arizona Arrestee
Reporting Information Network. Descriptive statistics and regression analysis are
used to examine views of the procedural justice experienced by arrestees during
arrest, perceptions of police legitimacy by arrestees, voluntary compliance to the
law, and voluntary cooperation with police. Results of the study show that
perceptions of legitimacy work through procedural justice, and that procedurally
just interactions with police mediate racial effects on views of legitimacy. Views
of procedural justice and legitimacy increase cooperation. No variables in this
study were significantly related to compliance.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
LIST OF TABLES ...................................................................................................... vi
CHAPTER
1 INTRODUCTION .................................................................................. 1
2 PERCEPTIONS OF THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM ............... 6
Ethnicity and Class ............................................................................. 9
Negative Experiences and Disorganization ..................................... 13
3 PROCEDURAL JUSTICE, LEGITIMACY, COMPLIANCE, AND
COOPERATION ........................................................................... 18
The Current State of Procedural Justice Theory .............................. 19
The Empirical Status of Procedural Justice ..................................... 22
4 METHODOLOGY ............................................................................... 35
Findings ............................................................................................. 45
5 DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION ................................................. 56
Conclusion ........................................................................................ 67
REFERENCES ........................................................................................................ 69
iii
LIST OF TABLES
Table Page
1. Descriptive Statistics ........................................................................... 39
2. OLS Regression Predicting Procedural Justice .................................. 46
3. OLS Regression Predicitng Legitimacy ............................................... 48
4. OLS Regression Predicting Legitimacy through Procedural Justice .. 49
5. Logistic Regression Predicting Cooperation ........................................ 51
6. Logistic Regression Predicting Cooperation through Procedural Justice
and Legitimacy ................................................................................... 52
7. Regression Predicting Compliance ....................................................... 54
8. Regression Predicting Compliance through Procedural Justice and
Legitimacy .......................................................................................... 55
1
Chapter 1
INTRODUCTION
Criminologists are interested in studying various aspects of crime and the
criminal justice system. They have developed a litany of theories in an effort to
explain criminal behavior. One question germane to understanding criminal
justice processes is why do people obey the law? There is no simple answer to
this question. Crime is a complex problem with no simple solution. The bulk of
criminologists’ efforts have focused on ecological factors that are seen as the root
cause of crime and deviance. Common themes that are associated with crime are
ecological factors such as concentrated disadvantage, deviant peer groups,
unemployment, a weakening of social bonds, among other things. What have not
been given much attention to by criminologists until recently are the pro-social
and criminogenic behaviors of justice system actors. It seems antithetical that the
justice system could be a source of crime because the purpose of such a system,
and the formal sanctions they impose, is to garner compliance to and respect for
the law. However, a growing body of empirical research suggests that it is
entirely possible, perhaps even a widespread phenomenon (Tyler, 1990; Sherman,
1993).
To some degree, just about everybody violates the law (Tyler, 1990). It is
rare to find someone who has never driven over the speed limit, littered, or
experimented with illegal drugs. However, most people do not engage in serious
crimes that own the connotation of “criminal.” We typically do not call speeders
criminals although they are breaking the law. The same could be argued about
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those who recreationally use narcotics, or minors drinking alcohol. To identify
these individuals as “criminals” would be misleading. Even police officers are
occasionally guilty of driving under the influence of alcohol. In most cases, they
will not lose their job because of a DUI. For more serious crimes such as
burglary, robbery, arson, and homicide, though, people generally obey the law
(Tyler,1990). Only a small number of people commit serious crimes. So, a
question criminologists are concerned with is why almost everybody obeys the
law.
It seems reasonable that the threat of sanctions and punishment is why
people obey the law. This line of thinking is certainly politically popular. There
are alternative perspectives, however. Punishment coming from the justice
system can have conflicting and sometimes undesired effects. Instead of
deterrence, punishment can incite future criminality with some people (Sherman,
1993). In general, the goals of the justice system are to punish wrongdoers for
their illegal behavior, provide retribution for victims, and to discourage people
from engaging in future crime (Sherman, 1993). The system is there to enact
policies that can accomplish these goals as efficiently and effectively as possible.
As noted earlier, the way criminal justice system actors behave when dealing with
the public may have noncompliant, uncooperative, and criminogenic effects,
which may be counterproductive from a public policy standpoint. The police, the
courts, and the correctional system serve as the means of formal social control in
this country. How people interact with and perceive these institutions can
influence future behavior by the public.
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People expect to be treated fairly and respectfully, and when they are not
feelings of anger and defiance are potentially harbored. In the case of an
interaction between the public and the police, a person may feel that the
interaction was unfair or may have led to an unfair outcome. For example, the
individual may feel that the officer did not take the time to listen to their version
of the story and that the officer did not value their opinions and perspectives. In
such a case, the individual may over time develop ill feelings toward that officer
and other authority figures within the criminal justice system. This may have the
effect of spoiling the individual’s views of that authority’s legitimacy to enforce
the law. A possible result may be future noncompliance to the law and an
unwillingness to cooperate with the police (Tyler, 1990). This behavioral
response is tightly linked to the concept of procedural justice. Tyler’s (1990)
thorough investigation of Chicago respondents furthers and refines the concept of
procedural justice empirically where he concludes that the main reason why
people obey the law is based on how people are treated by authorities. A detailed
discussion of it is to follow later.
There is a theoretical chain of causal events here that begins with a
personal or vicarious negative interaction with an authority figure and concludes
with noncompliance to authority figures in the future. Interactions with authority
figures form a person’s perception of those authority figures. Those perceptions
influence an individual’s views of official’s legitimacy in the capacity as an
authority. If the authority figures are not viewed as legitimate in the execution of
their power, then there may be no reason for an individual to abide by their rules.
4
A procedurally just contact is likely to inspire views of legitimacy which may
contribute to voluntary compliance and cooperation with the law. A procedurally
unjust contact may lower views of legitimacy which may not garner compliance
and cooperation with the law.
This thesis will first discuss perceptions of the United States criminal
justice system in the second chapter. The third chapter will discuss the concepts
of procedural justice and the empirical status of the theory. One goal of this
thesis is to demonstrate that perceptions of the criminal justice system matter
when it comes to inducing law abiding and unlawful behavior from the public.
Another goal of the paper is to further the extant knowledge on factors
contributing to views of procedural justice and legitimacy, compliance and
cooperation with the law.
Chapter four is the methodology section to this study. Research on
procedural justice has typically drawn samples from the general population.
Missing from the current body of research are studies using samples drawn from
arrestee populations. This research is important because it aims to take a step
toward filling that gap by investigating whether or not prior findings on
procedural justice extend to an arrestee population. The data used in this study
come from a sample of recently arrested individuals in Maricopa County,
Arizona. Do arrestees share attitudes about procedural justice with the general
population? What predictors are associated with forming those attitudes? The
data will be used to answer these questions. Analyses will identify factors
contributing to views of procedural justice and legitimacy, compliance and
5
cooperation with the law within the arrestee population in Maricopa County,
Arizona. The last chapter provides a discussion of the salient findings offered by
this investigation and consider some implications relevant to procedural justice
issues.
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Chapter 2
PERCEPTIONS OF THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM
An argument being made in this paper is that citizens’ perceptions matter
and have a direct influence on their subsequent behavior and those who perceive
the system in high regard will be more likely to comply with the rules of that
system. It is argued on the other hand that those who have negative perceptions
of the system will be less inclined to comply with system rules and be less likely
to cooperate with system agents. Common themes when measuring attitudes
about the legal system and procedural justice are fairness and respect. Questions
and statements about honesty, justice, fairness and respect are used consistently
when measuring attitudes toward the legal system and toward personal or
vicarious experiences of procedural justice. Studies of police perceptions and
police support have similar measures to those used in studies of police related
procedural justice and legitimacy. In fact, they could act as proxies for one
another since the two topics are operationalized similarly. A discussion on the
dynamics of perceptions of the criminal justice system in the United States is
warranted as a starting point.
Perceptions and attitudes about the criminal justice system are an
interesting subject for empirical investigation. They vary across space and time
and are impacted by a variety of legal and extralegal factors. Events that occur in
one part of the country may not affect public opinions in another part of the
country. Attitudes towards the legal system and government authority also tend
to change over time. Well-publicized events involving the miscarriage of justice
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can negatively affect the public’s attitudes towards the system, but over time
attitudes tend to return to their previous levels before the event. There have been
many clearly demonstrated incidents of criminal injustice in recent years,
including excessive use of force and racial bias. Some of the most salient have
occurred in Los Angeles and New York City. The incidents discussed here
concern police brutality and the abuse of authority.
In 1979 two officers of the Los Angeles Police Department shot and killed
an African-American woman named Eulia Love. She had allegedly threatened
the officers with a knife. According to public opinion polls taken after the
shooting, 51% of Caucasians, 66% of Hispanics, and 81% of African-Americans
felt that the officers were unjustified in using lethal force. The polls also
indicated that police approval ratings sharply declined within the minority
community (Tuch and Weitzer, 1997). In spring of 1991, the country saw the
brutal beating of Rodney King at the hands of four Caucasian police officers. It
was almost universally believed by the public that officers used excessive force
dealing with Rodney King (Tuch and Weitzer, 1997). Demonstrations and later
riots ensued after the officers involved in the beating were exonerated in criminal
court. After the incident, the approval ratings for the LAPD within the African-
American community bottomed out at 14% (Tuch and Weitzer, 1997). Several
institutional changes occurred within the leadership of the police department as a
result of the incident. It took almost four years until approval ratings of the
LAPD reached pre-Rodney King levels. This case had significant staying power
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in terms of the public’s perception of the police department; however, the staying
power was much greater for African-Americans than for Caucasians.
In 1996, two Mexican immigrants were severely beaten by Riverside
County sheriff’s officers. The videotape of the beatings went viral. Again,
approval ratings for law enforcement in the Los Angeles area plummeted,
especially in the case of Hispanics and African-Americans. These widely
publicized incidents are no doubt a source for the public’s criticism and
skepticism of law enforcement, and the effect’s significance is correlated with
ethnicity. Tuch and Weitzer (1997) show that in 1997, 75% of African-
Americans viewed police brutality as commonplace, whereas only 38% of
Caucasians thought so. Hispanics tend to score between African-Americans and
Caucasians in their views of police brutality and police approval ratings.
Widely publicized events of criminal injustice affect attitudes about the
system negatively at local and national levels, as evidenced by national decline in
police approval after these incidents in Los Angeles. Of course, not all police
misconduct and excessive use of force occurs in Los Angeles. The New York
Police Department shooting of Amadou Diallo, the sexual assault of Abner
Louima in a NYPD precinct station, and the shooting of Sean Bell contributed to
large scale public mistrust of the police on the East Coast (Weitzer, 2002; Kane
and White, 2009). Race most certainly plays a role in the level of approval and
the staying power of the event. In turn, lower approval ratings mean lower
confidence in the police and the polls show that minorities have had lower levels
of confidence and trust in the police historically (Tuch and Weitzer, 1997).
9
ETHNICITY AND CLASS
There are many ways to measure perceptions of the criminal justice
system. Perceptions can range from positive to negative or somewhere in
between, but for the purpose of this paper, negative perceptions of police
authority are to be the focus. Criminal injustice occurs when agents of the legal
system behave unjustly (this includes abuse of power, unjustified use of force,
racial biased policing, etc.) and has the tendency to impact one’s perceptions of
the justice system negatively, as well as those visible representatives of the
system. Research has consistently shown that minorities, particularly African-
Americans, view the legal system as biased against minority communities,
especially as it related to the most visible agents of the system, the police (Brooks
and Jeon-Slaughter, 2001). Using data collected from a study under the direction
of the National Center for State Courts, and for the Law Enforcement Assistance
Administration of the U.S. Department of Justice, Hagan and Albonetti (1982)
found that race is the most persistent and striking influence on the perception of
criminal injustice. Police and law enforcement contacts had the largest influence
on negative perceptions in their study. Contacts with the courts and other system
actors did not affect negative perceptions as much as contacts with law
enforcement, but were still a source of perceived injustices. African-Americans
were much more likely than Caucasians to perceive criminal injustice as
interacting at all levels of criminal justice system (Hagan and Albonetti, 1982).
Also found in the 1982 study, social class affects perceptions of the legal system.
When controlling for race and ethnicity, the unemployed and the poor are more
10
likely to recognize and perceive behaviors as criminal injustices. A noteworthy
finding in the study was the manner in which class structure interacts with race.
As African-Americans move up in class standing, their views of criminal injustice
become more varied from that of their Caucasian counterparts and well-off
African-Americans perceive more injustice in our legal system than Caucasians
(Hagan and Albonetti, 1982). This may be because affluent African-Americans
spend more time in areas dominated by Caucasians where they may be scrutinized
more carefully. Affluence may also influence expectations in how well-off
African-Americans are treated by police.
Another recent study by the National Center for State Courts further
substantiates the above claim. For African-Americans, as income increases the
level of trust in the legal system declines (Brooks and Jeon-Slaughter, 2001).
Well to do African-Americans will perceive more criminal injustice than their
Caucasian peers and under-class African-Americans. Higher income African-
Americans have been shown to be skeptical of the courts’ abilities to distribute
justice fairly and equitably to African-Americans as compared to Caucasians, and
African-Americans in the highest income bracket are about twice as likely as
lower income African-Americans to view the legal system as unfair (Brooks,
2000; Brooks and Jeon-Slaughter, 2001). Middle and upper-class African-
Americans are more likely than Caucasians and poor African-Americans to view
not only the legal system, but institutions within our society as being racist, and
opine that the American dream is an unattainable myth (Hochschild, 1995).
Upper-class African-Americans also tend to feel that their ethnicity is
11
underrepresented in the political arena (Brown, 1994). They also perceive greater
injustice in education, housing, and health care (Hagan, Shedd, and Payne, 2005).
There is a large amount of evidence supporting the idea that African-Americans,
typically better off ones, are more likely than Caucasians and poor African-
Americans to view many of our country’s institutions as unjust. Higher levels of
education may increase African-American citizens’ exposure and knowledge of
incidents involving prejudicial treatment and the miscarriage of justice.
African-Americans, as noted earlier, have less favorable views of the
police than other ethnic groups. Brunson (2005) suggests that harassment by the
police is partially responsible for such views. African-American youths are
suspected, stopped, questioned, watched, and held by police at a higher rate than
other ethnic groups therefore contributing the perception of being harassed by the
police on the basis of skin color (Brunson, 2005). The study showed that 83% of
respondents (all African-American) reported having direct experience of police
harassment. More than 90% knew someone who had been a harassed by the
police. Many respondents complained about the abusive language and physically
intrusive searches officers used in the contact. A quarter of the sample in the
study reported that they have experienced a contact with police that went beyond
harassment into the arena of aggression without proper reasons for the conduct.
Almost half of the respondents said they knew of someone who had been a victim
of unwarranted aggressive policing practices (Brunson, 2005).
The disparity in perceptions of criminal injustice is not limited to just
African-Americans versus Caucasians because the demographic uptick in
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Hispanics is reshaping the population distribution in American cities (Sampson
and Lauristen, 1997). Perceived injustice exists within these other ethnic
categories as well. Minority groups in general have claimed that they are the
target of disproportionate physical and verbal abuse, and receive inadequate
protection and service from law enforcement (Radelet, 1980), while at the same
time the police tend to think they are unduly blamed by minority communities as
a source of oppression. The Hispanic population is another minority group that
deserves special attention because the Hispanic population is growing. A report
by the United States Commission on Civil Rights noted that “Mexican-American
citizens are subject to unduly harsh treatment by law enforcement officers… they
are often arrested on insufficient grounds, receive physical and verbal abuse, and
penalties which are disproportionately severe” (Carter, 1985).
In a study of Hispanic respondents in Texas, Carter (1985) found that
those Hispanics who had recent contact with police reported that less than half of
the officers had a favorable attitude, and that one-fifth of the officers were
reported to have disrespectful attitudes. The way that officers conduct themselves
is related to police job performance ratings. When rating police performance, the
amount of police contacts has a direct impact. The police agencies that Hispanics
had more contact with received lower performance ratings (Carter, 1985). Other
agencies, like highway patrol, which have lower amounts of contact with the
public tended to have better performance ratings from the Hispanic population in
the Texas study. The public’s attitude toward the local police may be relatively
favorable until they come in contact with the police (Carter, 1985).
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NEGATIVE EXPERIENCES AND DISORGANIZATION
Other studies have validated the premise that contact with the police tends
to drive an individual’s view of the police downward (Hagan, Shedd, and Payne,
2005). One reason that contact with the police tends to drive down police
performance ratings is the inadequate performance of the officer coupled with the
unrealistic public expectations of the police. Hagan, Shedd, and Payne (2005)
found that Hispanics felt that they were under protected by the police which led to
an increase in the fear of crime. Fear of crime is also associated with police
performance ratings. As the public perceives increases in the crime rate, fear of
crime will also tend to increase. This effect tends to be mediated by local news
coverage of crime increases (Chiricos, 2004). Inevitably, the threat of being
victimized will create a demand for increased protection from police and
consequently increase the expectations. Being a victim of a crime is related to
police perceptions as well, and if someone has been a victim of a crime then they
are more likely to view police services as inadequate (Hagan, Shedd, and Payne,
2005).
Non-reporting of crimes is a reality in our legal system (Hagan, Shedd,
and Payne, 2005). A notable and consistent reason why people do not report
crime victimization experiences is because they feel that there is little or nothing
the police can do to resolve the incident. Hagan, Shedd, and Payne (2005) found
that Hispanics do not report crimes because their previous experience dealing
with the police was a negative experience, and the feeling that the police were
unable to handle the situation effectively. The study suggests that police-Hispanic
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relations ought to be improved; in fact, Hispanics reported that when an officer
was introduced into a situation, the officer often made the situation worse.
Like African-Americans, better educated Hispanics have less confidence
in the legal system to distribute justice evenhandedly both in terms of procedure
and outcomes. Carter (1985) suggests that an absence of communication and a
lack of cultural understanding between the groups contribute to the poor
relationship. When considering the attitudes toward police, race must be taken
into consideration. Race is one of the most important variables of which
researchers must take note (Decker, 1981).
A study of Chicago youths shows that even younger individuals perceive a
disparity in the justice system (Hagan, Shedd, and Payne, 2005). African-
American and Hispanic youths in the study view members of their own ethnicity
as being more likely to be stopped and questioned unfairly by the police. The
study reports that police come in to contact with African-American youth much
more frequently than Hispanic youth, which in turn come in contact with the
police much more than Caucasian youth. However, low socio-economic status
may explain much of the variation in police contacts within all ethnic categories.
An interesting finding in the above study is that perceptions of criminal injustice
actually increase as the level of Caucasian student integration increases. This
suggests that as the level of Caucasian students increase, minority students
perceive that they are treated more unfairly by authority figures as compared to
the other Caucasian students. Youth perceptions are important because views of
15
society, justice, and politics are formed at a young age and persist into adulthood
(Hagan, Shedd, and Payne, 2005).
It has been found that living in an urban area is associated with more
negative perceptions of the legal system. Those living in the inner-city and areas
of poverty are more likely to experience or perceive criminal injustices than their
more rural area dwelling counterparts regardless of ethnicity (Brooks and Jeon-
Slaughter, 2001; Hagan and Albonetti, 1982). Although the center-cities in the
U.S. are still largely comprised of minorities, race alone does not account for all
the negative attitudes toward the legal system. Reports of unethical police
practices are widespread in inner-city areas and ghetto neighborhoods (Roberts
and Stalans, 1997). Chambliss (1997) shows that in these heavily populated
urban areas where there are large concentrations of disadvantaged minorities,
police surveillance is more intense and pervasive than in ethnic majority,
suburban neighborhoods, thus contributing to increased levels of perceived
injustice and higher arrest rates among minorities.
One may ask why there is such a disparity in legal cynicism within racial
categories. It likely cannot be explained by subcultural tolerance of criminality.
Some have argued that minorities are more tolerant of crime and violence within
the context of disorganized neighborhoods, and that police intervention is usually
seen as harassment. Sampson and Bartusch (1998) found that this is not the case
and that minority citizens actually have less tolerance to crime than Caucasians in
certain cases. It just happens that areas of concentrated disadvantage which are
rife with crime and violence contain a larger proportion of minorities. The
16
minorities in such areas are victims of their surrounding environment. Given the
dubious history between politically dominant Caucasians and minority
communities in the past, it certainly may be understandable that minorities harbor
resentment. Above this though, it should be noted that elements of historical
racism still exist in the criminal justice system. Minorities are more likely to
receive the death penalty, be shot by police, get sentenced to longer periods of
time, be victimized, have adversarial contacts with police, and be tried as an adult
when under the age of 18 (Tuch and Weitzer, 1997; Petersillia, 1983, Tonry,
2004, and Unnever, 2008).
African-Americans, particularly youth, and Hispanics are differentially at
risk of justice system surveillance compared to Caucasians, and where these folks
live plays a vital role in their contact and exposure to the legal system (Hagan,
Shedd, and Payne, 2005). Even outside of the criminal justice system there are
disparities in treatment. African-Americans are paid less given the same
educational level as Caucasians (Wright, 1978). It follows that better educated
minorities would be aware of the racial disparities that plague our society. As
noted earlier, more educated minorities are more cynical of the legal system and
perceive higher levels of criminal injustice. For policy makers to scoff at the
ethnic disparity in perceptions about the legal system would be imprudent. It
certainly makes sense that minorities have an increased level of cynicism towards
the legal system and an increased level of perceived injustice. They tend to bear
the brunt of experiencing more injustices, and any study of perceived injustices
17
within the legal system without ethnic and class variables would be incorrectly
specified.
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Chapter 3
PROCEDURAL JUSTICE, LEGITIMACY, COMPLIANCE, AND
COOPERATION
Public authorities and officials should care about how they interact with
the public they serve. A growing body of empirical research suggests that the
manner in which people are treated by authorities matters and directly impacts
their outlook on local authority figures. In order to get the public to voluntarily
comply with authority’s directives, the public needs to perceive those authorities
as legitimate and serving the needs of the public. That is why perception matters.
Perceptions of legitimacy are formed by the personal or vicarious interactions
with authorities. Procedurally fair interactions will form views of legitimacy
while procedurally unfair interactions will not (Tyler, 1990; Tyler, 2003; Kane,
2005; Reisig and Mesko, 2009).
When the public views those authority figures as legitimate, they will be
more inclined to voluntarily comply with the authority’s directives. Voluntary
compliance is much more desirable than deterrence-based compliance, which is
founded on fear. Fewer resources are required to get people to comply with laws
when compliance is voluntary. Deterrence-based perspectives, those based on the
threat of punishment and the rewards of compliance, take a greater amount of
resources. Salaries, prisons, and court buildings all take public tax money to
maintain. In short, the system runs more efficiently when people believe in the
moral validity of public agents and their policies and procedures.
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The theory of procedural justice has existed for decades and has been used
to explain behavior in sociology, psychology, politics, and economics. It was
initially made popular by Thibaut and Walker (1975). Originally, the theory
focused on outcomes. If the outcome of the interaction was favorable to a party
during a social interaction then that party would view that interaction as fair.
Having control in the decision making process was also seen as important.
According to the theory, if citizens feel that they have some control in the
decisions about which an outcome is the result, the process will be viewed as fair.
Not wanting the negative outcome of jail, prison, or fines, people were theorized
to be deterred from crime through tough sanctions. This instrumental approach of
deterrence has dominated criminal justice policy for decades. However, the
empirical evidence has not supported the deterrence component of the theory’s
claims very well.
THE CURRENT STATE OF PROCEDURAL JUSTICE THEORY
Procedural justice has more recently been furthered by the seminal work
of Tyler (1990). In his thorough study of Chicago residents, he advocated for a
different approach in understanding procedural justice. Instead of favorable
outcomes being the primary focus, Tyler suggests that it is how people are treated
in their immediate interaction with authorities that matters most. This approach
focuses on people’s views of what behavior is just and moral, and not people’s
self-interest in the outcomes they receive. This normative paradigm states that
people comply with the law voluntarily out of an obligation or duty to the moral
rules of law and to the legitimate authorities rightfully creating and enforcing
20
those laws. The moral appropriateness of laws is not consistent for all laws,
however. Some laws viewed by certain groups of people have no moral
implication, like in some cases the use of illicit drugs. Many people use drugs
recreationally, but do not steal. Stealing is viewed as immoral and so people are
morally obligated to obey laws against stealing. Smoking marijuana on the other
hand, does not have such a clear immoral implication and so a larger segment of
society violates the law and smokes the drug regardless of the risk of legal
sanctions.
During interactions with police or with court officials, people want to be
treated fairly to a greater degree than they want a favorable outcome. People
judge authorities on the normative aspects of the interaction rather than the
outcome of the interaction itself. If the processes of that interaction are judged to
be fair, honest, and respectful by the public, then the authority figures will be
regarded more highly in terms of legitimacy. This does not mean that outcomes
are irrelevant. Outcomes do matter. However, people expect the outcomes to be
commensurately fair as well. The punishment should be commensurate to the
crime, and the sanction should be consistent across space and time. Punishments
should be distributed equitably, and with concern for the individual’s well-being.
If one person was fined one thousand dollars for speeding, while another person
was only fined only one hundred dollars for the same speeding ticket, the
punishment was distributed unfairly. The first person would more likely harbor
ill feelings towards the authorities in such a case, thus affecting the authority’s
legitimacy in that person’s mind.
21
People want to experience neutrality, honesty, fairness, politeness, and a
respect for their rights when they interact with authorities. They want to have
their voice heard and to be considered a valuable member of society. This is what
procedural justice means, per se. A procedurally just interaction will create less
bias, and judgments will be perceived as being made fairly and honestly. Fairness
and honesty are the foundation for quality decision making in a procedurally just
interaction. All parties must be allowed representation, and have their turn to
explain their side of the story. If errors are made those errors must be correctable
in a procedurally just interaction. These normative aspects of procedural justice
will affect the perceptions of legitimacy within the public. According to Tyler
(1990), procedural justice is the basis of legitimacy. Working through legitimacy,
the public voluntarily obeys the law and respects government agents. An
authority whom is viewed as legitimate has a perceived right to dictate rules and
regulations onto citizens, and because authority figures are limiting the behaviors
and freedoms available to the public they need to be viewed as legitimate.
Authorities without legitimacy will have a difficult time regulating public
behavior and controlling disorder. Legitimacy is important for cooperation and
compliance with the law as people are likely to cooperate with legitimate
authorities. Cooperation means to provide police with information, report crimes
and suspicious behavior, and do as instructed by government agents among other
things. Compliance means to voluntarily follow the laws and directives
established by legitimate authorities.
22
This normative perspective of procedural justice is validated by analysis of
the data collected in the Chicago study (Tyler, 1990). The study empirically
shows that the procedures undertaken during an interaction with authorities form
perceptions of legitimacy, and that as levels of legitimacy increase, so do levels of
compliance. This relationship exists regardless of social and demographic
characteristics, and regardless of outcomes relating to distributive justice (Tyler,
1990). The favorability of outcomes is not that important of a factor contributing
to legitimacy while on the other hand procedural justice is the most important
factor when forming perceptions of legitimacy (Tyler, 1990). Even in the case of
an undesirable outcome, such as an arrest or prison sentence, if the social
interaction and process was procedurally just, the parties involved will be more
inclined to comply with the law in the future than if an outcome was achieved
through procedurally unjust means (Tyler, 1990).
Drawing on this concept of legitimacy, it is much easier for “legitimate”
authorities to influence behavior than for “feared” authorities to influence
behavior through deterrence. Tyler’s conclusion from his 1990 work is that
people mainly obey the law because they believe that the law and the system are
legitimate, not because of the threat of punishment. Lawmakers and criminal
justice agents would do well by trying to make the system as legitimate as
possible in the eyes of the public instead of using the fear of sanctions.
THE EMPIRICAL STATUS OF PROCEDURAL JUSTICE
Since Tyler’s early work (1990), a substantial amount of empirical
research has been produced on procedural justice and legitimacy, and the
23
theoretical concept has accrued significant empirical support. A police agency
will benefit from being viewed as legitimate because as studies have
demonstrated the police cannot successfully control crime and disorder without
the cooperation of the public. When legitimacy is low, the public’s willingness to
cooperate with police is less likely (Sampson, Raudenbush, and Earls, 1997).
Axelrod (1984) suggests that cooperation is more likely when both parties, the
public and the authorities, cooperate with each other, but when one party
introduces unnecessary competition for dominance within the interaction, the
other party will also respond in an adversarial manner. He shows that it is more
beneficial to individuals in authoritarian roles like the police, and to the public, to
elicit compliance and cooperation through procedural justice rather than through
the often-alienating deterrence strategies.
Mandatory arrest policies for domestic violence have been in place across
the nation in effort to deter domestic householders from engaging in domestic
violence in the future. The idea is that the unpleasant experience of being arrested
will act as a greater deterrent than a simple warning from a police officer. To a
large extent, these policies stem from a series of experiments on the deterrent
effects of mandatory arrests on misdemeanor domestic violence, which were
spearheaded in Minneapolis by Sherman and Berk (1984). In the original study
the authors found that arresting people involved in a domestic violence incident,
regardless of the situational factors, had a greater deterrent effect on future
domestic violence compared to mediation by a police officer and separating the
parties involved for an eight hour period. Since this study, however, there have
24
been multiple replication studies in various cities. The results of these follow-up
studies show that mandatory arrest policies have equivocal results. In some cases
the policy had a deterrent effect, in some cases it had no effect, and in some cases
it had an escalation effect (Sherman, 1992). These follow-up studies suggest that
deterrence strategies may not substantially deter future domestic violence. Even
in light of the recent findings, mandatory arrest policies are ubiquitous throughout
police agencies in the United States.
More relevant to this thesis, the Sherman and Berk (1984) study did not
record the procedures involved during the interaction between police and
domestic violence suspects. It could have been the manner in which suspects
were dealt with that explained the findings. Specifically, Paternoster et. al. (1997)
examined the relationship between procedural justice and spousal assault. This
study found that those parties who had been arrested and perceived low levels of
procedural justice were the most likely to commit future acts of domestic
violence. Those parties who were arrested but perceived high levels of procedural
justice and parties who were not arrested were predicted to have similar
outcomes. Being detained in jail for long periods of time had an adverse effect on
perceptions of procedural justice. In such cases, people tended to feel as if their
due process rights had been violated and/or the sanction was excessive.
Perceptions of procedural justice were found to have an inhibiting effect on
spousal assault reoffending. This study suggests that procedural justice can offset
the criminogenic effect of mandatory arrest policies.
25
The police are the primary and most visible force of formal social control
in America. Policing is the institution with the responsibility of controlling public
disorder and maintaining public safety. In a study of New York City residents,
Sunshine and Tyler (2003) found that police legitimacy was predominantly based
on procedural justice. Performance evaluations and distributive justice also
contributed to legitimacy, although to a much lesser extent. This finding indicates
that it is not so much how well the public perceives the job performance of the
police that matters, but rather how the public perceives they are being treated by
the police. Normative values and instrumental values are important, distinct
constructs. The social values contributing to legitimacy are distinct from
performance evaluations. The study found that legitimacy was the most
substantial predictor contributing to cooperation and compliance with the law.
The effect of deterrence based variables, such as the risk of getting caught or
certainty of punishment, had little to do with compliance and cooperation with the
law.
The police, however, are not immune to problematic behavior themselves.
Bad things can happen when the police conduct themselves inappropriately. Such
misconduct has a damning effect on police legitimacy. Research suggests that the
majority of police misconduct occurs in disadvantaged areas where the police
presence is high (Kubrin and Weitzer, 2003b). Research has shown that residents
living in areas with structural disadvantage have less confidence in the police.
Vigilante justice occurs more often in these areas because citizens there feel that
the police would be less attentive or unresponsive to calls for police service
26
(Kubrin and Weitzer, 2003b). With the police being perceived as ineffective,
residents in these communities may feel under protected by law enforcement.
In a longitudinal study of New York City residents, Kane (2005) found
that, consistent with the ecology of crime expectations, increases in disadvantage
in a community predicted increases in violence. Areas with lower levels of
concentrated disadvantage had lower levels of violent crime. Findings from this
study suggest that overly aggressive enforcement practices and police misconduct,
both a form of procedural injustice, shaped the communities’ perceptions of
legitimacy. These factors influenced police precincts differentially based on the
degree of structural disadvantage. In short, higher levels of disadvantage were
found to be associated with lower levels of police legitimacy, and an increase in
violent crime was the result. Thus, legitimacy mediated the effects of structural
disadvantage on violence.
Where someone lives matters in the context of experiencing violence and
crime. Areas of concentrated disadvantage have a higher incidence of violence
and crime compared to the more affluent suburbs. Such contextual factors
contribute to lower levels of perceived legitimacy and lower levels of police
satisfaction (Kane, 2005; Murphy 2009). A disturbing reality about
disadvantaged areas in inner-cities is that minority residents are concentrated
there, and they are the likely subjects of the overtly aggressive or invasive police
practices and police misconduct.
As a consequence of these contextual processes, the feeling of being
racially profiled has undesired consequences. Obviously, a police officer will not
27
acknowledge that he/she stopped a citizen because the person belongs to a
minority group. Police may sometimes use the ambiguous rationale that the
person fits the description of a suspect, or some other pretext like failure to use a
blinker in order to search someone. Minority groups do have higher levels of
perceived mistreatment by the police, and as a result they tend to hold more
critical views of legitimacy and support the police less (Weitzer, 2002).
A study of California residents found that those who felt that they were
profiled due to their race were less likely to obey the edicts of authorities and that
if individuals believed the police to be fair, neutral, respectful, trustworthy and
polite they were less likely to feel that they had been profiled (Kane, 2005). A
similar study of New York City respondents by Kane (2005) found that profiling
undermines police performance evaluations and the police-community
relationship, especially for minorities. If people believe that racial profiling is
rampant, they are less inclined to support the police and the justice system in
general. The study found that procedural justice mediates judgments about racial
profiling. Those individuals who experienced a procedurally fair encounter with
the police were less likely to believe that profiling is prevalent in their area. A
third study by the researchers, also of New York City respondents, found that
views of profiling were directly linked to legitimacy and police performance
among non-whites, but not for whites. It follows that racial profiling is not a
major concern for citizens who are not routinely subjected to it. Racial profiling
has a damaging effect on legitimacy and public support for the police. Thus,
agencies can minimize negative judgments by using authority equitably and in a
28
reasonable manner for all racial and ethnic groups. Authorities being fair entails
quality decision making (neutrality), quality treatment (respect), and
trustworthiness (desire to be fair) when interacting with the public, even if the law
was broken (Tyler and Wakslak, 2004).
Dynamics of procedural justice and legitimacy are not limited to citizens’
encounters with police and courts. The same concept is at work within prisons as
well. Prison officials who do not operate in a fair and respectful way toward
inmates may contribute to prisoner misconduct (Tyler, 2003). The prison
environment is inhospitable. Politically popular “get tough” policies have made
the prison environment worse by overcrowding and restricting rewards for good
behavior. It is perhaps not surprising that inmates do not always comply with
prison authorities’ directives. Research indicates that such punitive policies have
not had the desired effect (Tyler, 2003; Reisig and Mesko, 2009).
Reisig and Mesko (2009) used a sample of prison inmates in Slovenia to
test a procedural justice model within an inmate population. They found that
reported prisoner misconduct and procedural justice judgments are negatively
correlated. The more an inmate is treated fairly and respectfully, the less the
likelihood of misconduct. This relationship remains statistically significant even
when controlling for other factors such as unconventional attitudes and criminal
history. Those inmates with a lengthy criminal history and those who condone
violence do have a higher rate of misconduct than other inmates, but fair and
respectful treatment can reduce the amount of rule-breaking by prisoners
generally. Deterrence-based correctional policy that assumes that self-interest,
29
rewards and punishments are the way to garner prisoner compliance suffers an
empirical deficiency. These policies are intuitively appealing, easy to understand,
and politically popular. However, procedural justice based strategies offer more
promising results.
The desire to be treated fairly extends to various aspects of human
interactions, not just correctional interactions. The line of inquiry noted
previously is extended by Kristina Murphy’s (2009) work in Australia. Previous
research has followed suit supporting the need for procedurally just interactions
with police and authority figures in Australia. Australians are more likely to view
the police as legitimate and are more satisfied with police when they experience
procedurally just interactions with criminal justice officials (Hinds and Murphy,
2007). Her 2009 study is insightful because it examines the differences between
involuntary police-initiated contacts (where the police initiate contact with a
suspect) and voluntary citizen-initiated contacts (where citizens request police
service). Prior research generally shows that voluntary contacts with the police
tend to lead to feelings of higher police satisfaction while involuntary contacts
with police tend to lead to less satisfaction (Skogan, 2005). All things considered,
procedural justice works differently for the two groups. For voluntary citizen-
initiated contacts, outcomes were more important than procedurally just
interactions. The opposite is true for involuntary police-initiated contacts. In the
case where the police approach a person, procedural justice is the main factor
contributing to assessments of police performance. This is because people who
request police services are looking for and expecting certain outcomes, so
30
achieving those outcomes become the primary measure of satisfaction in citizen-
initiated cases, while individuals contacted by the police did not ask for the
contact and their primary concern is the expectation of fair treatment by the police
(Murphy, 2009).
International studies may be used to compare the American legal system
with that of other countries’ legal systems with regard to legitimacy. It has been
noted in the research that Nordic countries have an unusually high level of
support for and trust in law enforcement compared to the United States. In a
democracy like that of the United States and in the countries of Scandinavia, the
police are heavily scrutinized by the public. Police actions and the laws they
enforce need to be deemed as just and reasonable; when they are not, support and
trust in agents of the system decreases. Democratic societies have the right and
responsibility to monitor police activities and to take part in the public discourse
of what police practices and laws are appropriate. When people have a voice, the
authorities are generally more legitimate in exercising their authority.
Again, legitimacy, procedural justice, support and trust in police are all
related, regardless of where in the world police-citizen interactions take place.
Several factors contribute to support and trust in the police. For example, living
in high crime areas tends to be associated with lower levels of police support
(Reisig and Parks, 2000). People who experience more crime tend to have less
faith in the ability of police to protect them. Those recently victimized also tend
to have less support for police for the same reasons (Kaarianen, 2008; Carter,
1985). Kaarianen (2008) demonstrated in a study of Finnish citizens that
31
procedural justice can mitigate the ill effects of being victimized. Victims and
witnesses of crimes in Finland did not lose trust in the police. Finland has one of
the lowest crime rates in the industrialized world. It also has a comparatively low
number of police officers per capita. Surely, there are a number of contributing
factors to this outside of policing policies. Kaarianen argues that the relationship
between the police and Finnish people is a healthy one. The Finnish people trust
their police force more so than many other countries because of how well they are
treated by the police, even after being victimized. This may be because the role
of the police in Finland is different from that of the United States where crime
control is a priority.
When measuring compliance to the law, demographic variables account
for very little when procedural justice and legitimacy variables are introduced.
The race effect with satisfaction of police becomes much less pronounced when
contextual factors are accounted for (Tyler, 1990; Murphy, 2009; Reisig and
Parks, 2000). This suggests that it is not just because someone is from a minority
group that they will automatically have critical feelings about the police and that
they will not comply with the law. Minorities have more contact with the legal
system in part because a large proportion of policing resources are dedicated to
the inner-city where racial and ethnic minorities are more highly concentrated.
Likewise, the amount of wealth someone has does not influence their perceptions
of authority figures and their operating procedures. The fairness of the interaction
is what is really important.
32
It has been established that procedural justice leads to legitimacy which in
turn leads to voluntary compliance to the law. Procedural injustice leads to lower
views of legitimacy and, consequently, noncompliance to the law.
Noncompliance does not necessarily mean future law breaking. That is not made
explicit by the procedural justice literature. However, there is an alternative
theoretical framework similar to the concepts of procedural justice that predicts
negative or unpleasant experiences with authorities can cause crime rates to
climb: Sherman’s (1993) defiance theory. A growing body of evidence suggests
that criminal sanctions can backfire. Research on sanctions and the deterrent
effects of sanctions is mixed. Some studies suggest they prevent future crime,
some suggest they are irrelevant to future crime, and some suggest sanctions
actually incite future crime. In the end, sanctions affect people differently based
on a variety of social factors (Sherman, 1993).
Two common themes have been developed in the review of sanction
effects. First, violations of expected fair treatment when sanctions are delivered
have an increasing effect on crime, and second, sanctions will increase crime or
fail to deter crime among social out-groups even while they deter social in-groups
(Sherman, 1993). Social out-groups are those individuals who are not part of the
dominant normative social culture. They are considered by the dominant social
group as being anti-social or marginal to mainstream society. The in-group has
pro-social attitudes and behaviors that are considered normal and are adopted by
most members of society.
33
Sherman defines defiance as “the net increase in the prevalence, incidence,
or seriousness of future offending against a sanctioning community caused by
proud, shameless reaction to the administration of a criminal sanction.” It is a
reaction to formal and informal punishment. Defiance occurs when the offender
views the criminal sanction as unfair, the offender is poorly bonded to or alienated
from the sanctioning body, the offender views the sanction as stigmatizing, and
the offender refuses to acknowledge the shame the sanction has caused (Sherman,
1993). When a sanction is viewed as fair, a well-bonded offender who accepts the
shame of the sanction will likely be deterred from future offending. When a
sanction is viewed as unfair, defiance theory predicts three possible reactions.
First, when a poorly bonded offender accepts the shame an unfair, stigmatizing
sanction induces, the sanction will be irrelevant to future offending. Second,
when a poorly bonded offender denies the shame they feel and respond to it with
anger, the stigmatizing sanction will tend to increase future offending through
defiant attitudes. Third, when an offender is well-bonded, the social bonds will
mitigate a defiant response. Social bonds are critical to behavioral studies
because social bonding variables are some of the best predictors of anti-social and
pro-social behaviors (Sherman, 1993).
Belvedere, Worrall, and Tibbetts suggest in their 2005 study that the
increased levels of resistance to the police within minority communities is
explained by defiance theory. They argue that minorities often feel unfairly
treated by white officers thus enhancing defiant attitudes toward the police.
Piquero and Bouffard (2003) found that confrontational and physically aggressive
34
actions by the police generate defiant behaviors like refusing to cooperate, cursing
at the officer, and becoming physical with the officer. Bouffard and Piquero
(2010) found that defining the sanction as unfair and being poorly bonded to the
community are the most important factors contributing to defiance.
35
Chapter 4
METHODOLOGY
This study is important and contributes to the literature because is furthers
the extant knowledge on procedural justice. A review of the literature shows that
studies of procedural justice almost always use samples drawn from the general
population. Arrestee populations are underrepresented in procedural justice
research. Certainly, there is valuable information to be learned from studying
arrestee populations. It is likely that arrestees have more contact with criminal
justice system agents, which may potentially lead to greater defiance and lower
levels of perceived legitimacy. There may be processes at work that effect
arrestees differently than individuals in the general population. Frequent
offenders are in contact with the police more often than the general population,
and less than 10% of criminals commit the vast majority of crimes (DeLisi, 2005).
There may be differences in how these offenders perceive procedural justice and
legitimacy. The sample for this study is drawn from the arrestee population in
Maricopa County, Arizona. Which factors contribute to perceptions of procedural
justice and legitimacy, and compliance and cooperation with the law within the
arrestee population? Are the contributing factors similar for both arrestee and
general populations? This thesis will address these questions.
The data used in this study were collected by the Arizona Arrestee
Reporting Information Network, or AARIN project based at The Center for
Violence Prevention and Community Safety at Arizona State University (ASU) in
downtown Phoenix, Arizona. The AARIN project is funded in part by the
36
Maricopa County, Arizona Manager’s Office and any opinion contained within
this thesis does not reflect the opinions of Maricopa County. The research was
approved by ASU’s Human Subject Review Board (#0610001246). Survey
workers interviewed a random sample of arrestees who have been recently
arrested in Maricopa County. The random sampling procedure provides
generalizability to the greater arrestee population within Maricopa County.
Respondents in the sample are interviewed sometime between being booked into
jail and release from jail after their initial appearance in court. There is a 48 hour
“cap” for interview availability. If the arrestee had been in custody for more than
48 hours, they were not interviewed. This is because urine analyses were
collected to validate the surveys, and some chemicals in the urine metabolize
during the 48 hour window. Interviews typically lasted between 20 and 45
minutes, and were voluntary and confidential. The sample size included 337
arrestees, which is large enough for descriptive and inferential analysis. In total
there were .03% of cases with missing data for key variables. The missing data
were imputed using a linear imputation function in the SPSS statistical software
package. Linear imputation replaces missing data with the most likely imputed
value. This process is an acceptable way to deal with missing data.
The dependent variables used in this analysis are procedural justice,
legitimacy, compliance, and cooperation. The variables are measured as additive
scales and the questions and statements used to compile these outcome measures
are consistent with the established research (Tyler, 1990; Reisig, Bratton, and
Gertz, 2007). Procedural justice is measured by responses of strongly disagree,
37
disagree, agree, or strongly agree to the following statements: Police treat people
with respect; police take time to listen to people; police treat people fairly; police
respect people’s rights; police generally act professionally; and police usually
explain their actions and decisions. The procedural justice scaled dependent
variable is reliable with a Cronbach’s Alpha of .892. Legitimacy is measured by
the same response options to the following statements: You should do what
police tell you to do even if you disagree; you should accept police decisions,
even if you think they are wrong; the police can be trusted to make decisions that
are right for your community; most police officers in your community do their job
well; and most police are honest and trustworthy. The scaled legitimacy
dependent variable is also reliable with a Cronbach’s Alpha of .802. These
measures have been used in prior research to operationalize legitimacy; however,
a couple of the items may be argued to be more related to procedural justice or
distributive justice (Reisig and Mesko, 2009). Police being honest and
trustworthy could measure legitimacy or procedural justice. Police doing their job
well is also related to police performance or distributive justice. These items were
included in the scales because they have been validated as measures of legitimacy
in the literature, and including them increases the magnitude and variability in the
scale. Cooperation with the law is measured by Likert responses of very unlikely,
unlikely, likely, or very likely to questions of how likely a respondent would:
Call the police to report a theft/burglary where they were the victim; call the
police to report a minor (misdemeanor) crime; call the police to report a serious
(felony) crime; call the police to report a violent crime when they were the victim;
38
report suspicious activity near their residence; report suspicious activity in their
neighborhood; provide information to police to help find a suspected criminal;
and provide information to police anonymously to help find a suspected criminal.
Cronbach’s Alpha for cooperation is .924 which indicates internal consistency
and reliability. Compliance is measured by recording how often respondents
bought something they thought might be stolen, drank alcohol somewhere they
were not supposed to, illegally disposed of trash or littered, and violated traffic
laws. Respondents could answer never, not often, often, or very often to these
questions. Compliance is internally consistent with a Cronbach’s Alpha of .990
which is conducive to being reliable.
Three independent variables are of particular interest as guided by prior
research. Ethnicity has shown to be an important variable in the academic
literature. In this analysis, ethnicity is defined as African-American or Hispanic
which are coded nominally. The reference ethnic group in the regression analyses
include: Caucasians, Asians, Native Americans, and others not identified as
Hispanic or African-American. Police use of force or threatened used of force is
a dichotomous variable and included in the analysis. Previous findings suggest
that police use of force is negatively related to perceptions of procedural justice.
Contact initiation is also a dichotomous variable. Police-initiated contact includes
if the police contacted the respondent either because the respondent was pulled
over for a traffic violation, had an outstanding warrant, or was crime suspect.
Other variables included are frequency of drug use, recent victimization, mental
health, gender, number of arrests during the past year, gang involvement,
39
education, legitimate employment (illegitimate employment is not included in the
analysis), age, and income.
Table 1 below shows descriptive statistics for the variables in the analysis.
Procedural justice scores range from a minimum of 0 to a maximum of 18. The
mean is 8.922 with a standard deviation of 3.686. This variable is normally
distributed with a slight positive skew. Legitimacy scores range from a minimum
of 0 to a maximum of 15. The mean is 7.812 with a standard deviation of 2.683.
This variable is normally distributed as well.
Table 1 Descriptive Statistics
N Minimum Maximum Mean Std.
Deviation Procedural Justice
337 0 18 8.922 3.686
Legitimacy 337 0 15 7.812 2.683 Cooperation 337 0 24 13.679 6.028 Compliance 337 0 12 2.337 2.339 Victimization 337 0 279 3.774 21.328 Drug Use 337 0 95 11.789 16.635 Gender 337 0 1 0.751 0.433 Income 337 0 25000 1239.089 1872.065 Employment 337 0 1 0.507 0.501 Education 337 0 4 1.122 1.072 Mental Health 337 0 1 0.246 0.431 Gang Membership
337 0 1 0.1306 0.337
Age 337 17 65 31.515 10.855 Hispanic 337 0 1 0.303 0.460 African-American
337 0 1 0.145 0.353
Number of Arrests
337 0 20 0.763 1.809
Police Initiated Contact
337 0 1 0.823 0.380
Use of Force 337 0 1 0.206 0.404 Valid N 337
40
Cooperation scores range from a minimum of 0 to a maximum of 24. The mean
is 13.679 and the standard deviation is 6.028. The distribution for cooperation is
censored by the scope of the scale. For the analysis, this variable has been
transformed into a binary variable. Scores ranging from 0 to 8 are labeled as the
uncooperative category and are coded as 1. Almost 20% of the respondents fall in
this uncooperative category. Scores ranging from 9 to 24 are labeled as the
cooperative category and are coded as 0. About 80% of respondents fall in the
cooperative category. The bottom third of scores are uncooperative with police,
while the top two-thirds are cooperative. Compliance is a combined scale
variable with scores ranging from 0 to 12. Zero scores represent the most
compliant respondents and scores around 12 represent the least voluntary
compliant respondents. The mean for this variable is 2.34 and the standard
deviation is also 2.34. Much of the distribution in compliance is clustered around
lower limit of the scale. For analysis, compliance is transformed into a binary
variable predicting noncompliance with the law. Scores from 7 to 12 are coded as
1 and are considered noncompliant. Individuals in this cluster say they often
break the laws listed above. Scores from 0 to 6 are coded as 0 and represent
compliant respondents. About 90% percent of the respondents are compliant
while about 10% are noncompliant.
Ethnicity is captured using two dummy variables: African-American
(yes/no) and Hispanic (yes/no). Almost 50 of the respondents were African-
American, and 102 of them were Hispanic. The mean for African-American is
41
.15 with a standard deviation of .35. Hispanic has a mean of .30 with a standard
deviation of .46. Use of force is also measured as a dummy variable. The mean
is .21 and the standard deviation is .40. About 70 of the 337 participants had
force used or threatened against them by the police. Police-initiated contact is a
binary variable. A total of 275 of the 337 contacts were initiated by the police,
the rest were citizen-initiated contacts. The mean for this variable is.82 and the
standard deviation is .38. Drug use is a count variable and measures how many
days in the past thirty days a respondent used drugs for each category of drug.
For example, if the respondent used only marijuana one day out of the last thirty,
that would count as one, but if they used cocaine during the same day as the
marijuana, then it would be coded as two. An exhaustive list of illicit drugs is
accounted for including using prescription drugs illegitimately. The range of drug
use is 0 to 95. The mean score is 11.79 with a standard deviation of 16.64.
Victimization measures how many times a respondent had been a victim of
violence within the past year. The range for victimization is 0 to 279. There are a
few outliers in this distribution. The mean is 3.77 with a standard deviation of
21.33. Mental illness is a binary variable and records whether or not the
respondent had ever been diagnosed with a mental illness or an emotional
problem. The mean for this variable is .25 and the standard deviation is .43.
Eighty-three of the 337 respondents had been diagnosed with a mental illness or
an emotional problem by a doctor, counselor, or social worker. Number of arrests
is a continuous variable and measures how many times the respondent has been
arrested in the last year, not including the current arrest. Arrests range from 0 to
42
20. The mean is .76 and the standard deviation is 1.81. Gender is dichotomous,
male being coded as 1and female coded as 0. The mean is .75 and the standard
deviation is .43. A total of 253 of the 337 respondents were male. Gang
involvement measures whether or not the participant has ever been in gang,
currently or in the past. Forty-four of the participants reported some level of gang
involvement either currently or in the past. The mean is .13 and the standard
deviation is .34. Education measures the level of formal education successfully
completed. The categories for this variable are specified as: did not graduate
high school (coded as 0), graduated high school or got a GED (coded as 1),
attended some college (coded as 2), graduated with a trade, vocational, or
associates degree (coded as 3), or graduated with a 4 year degree (coded as 4).
The mean value is 1.12 and the standard deviation is 1.07. Employment is a
dichotomous variable measuring legitimate employment that is at least part-time.
The mean is .51 with a standard deviation of .50. Altogether, 171 of the 337
participants reported having legitimate employment that was at least part time.
Age is counted in years. Age ranges from 17 years old to 65 year old. The mean
is 31.51 and the standard deviation is 10.86. Income is a continuous variable and
measures how much legal income the respondent earned in the past month.
Income ranges from 0 to 25,000. The mean score is 1,239.10 with a standard
deviation of 1872.07.
Bivariate correlation analysis shows that multicollinearity between
variables in the data used in this thesis is not an issue. Procedural justice and
legitimacy are the highest correlating variables with a Pearson’s R of .773.
43
Procedural justice is moderately correlated with cooperation and weakly
correlated to compliance. Legitimacy is also moderately correlated to cooperation
and weakly correlated to compliance. Cooperation and compliance are weakly
correlated with a Pearson’s R of .044. None of the independent variables are
perfectly correlated to one another and are not in violation of regression
assumptions. In fact, there are no correlations within the independent variables
reaching a Pearson’s R of .300. The most correlated variables are education and
income with a statistic of .284. The next highest correlated variable pair is gang
member ship and drug use with a value of .259.
Five hypotheses are explored in this analysis:
• First, drawing from our understanding that procedural justice is the
basis of legitimacy, it is likely that the foundation for views of
legitimacy in the arrestee population is not different from the
general population.
• Second, compliance and cooperation with the law work through
legitimacy. As noted earlier in the review of literature, legitimacy
mitigates compliance and cooperation with the law. It is surmised
that a positive relationship exists between legitimacy and
compliance and cooperation to the law within the arrestee
population.
• Third, it is expected that minorities will have lower levels of
perceived procedural justice and legitimacy, and consequently,
lower levels of compliance and cooperation as well. A common
44
theme in the perception literature is that race is an important
variable, and that minorities tend to have more unfavorable
perceptions of the criminal justice system. The same is expected
in this analysis. However, it is also expected that the race effect on
compliance and cooperation with the law will be diminished when
procedural justice and legitimacy are included in the analytical
model.
• Fourth, police-initiated contacts are expected to be associated with
lower levels of procedural justice and legitimacy than citizen-
initiated contacts. Past research has shown that how the police-
citizen interaction was initiated matters. It is important to note that
outcome favorability is not measured in the data and will not be
included in this analysis.
• Fifth, police use of force or threatened use of force is expected to
negatively affect views of procedural justice. Research has shown
that when authorities exert their power excessively, the public is
likely to view the interaction as unfair, unjust, or inequitable.
It is also expected that because attitudinal measures are temporal, that
arrestees will have lower perceptions of procedural justice than the general
population. Arrestees have the contact with police fresh in their mind, while
respondents from the general public do not. Research has shown that the effects
of contentious police contacts wane over time, thus restoring perceptions of the
police to prior levels. However, this hypothesis cannot be tested directly by the
45
data used in this thesis. The data do not include information gathered from the
general public. If the dataset contained such information, the arrestee subsample
and the general population subsample could be compared to each other to
determine if recent arrest diminishes perceptions of procedural justice. Future
research should utilize data from both the arrestee population and general
population to conduct such analysis. For purposes of this study, the results will be
discussed in relation to prior research findings.
Regression analysis is used to test the hypotheses. The first model
predicts procedural justice using the independent variables described above. The
next limited model uses the variables to predict legitimacy. The model in a full
legitimacy model includes procedural justice. This process tests the first
hypothesis. In subsequent models, cooperation and compliance are predicted in
limited regression models prior to full models including legitimacy and
procedural justice. These models test the second hypothesis. The third, fourth,
and fifth hypotheses are examined in the seven models included in this analysis.
FINDINGS
The first of several statistical models in the thesis uses ordinary least
squares regression to predict the procedural justice dependent variable. Table 2
shows the results of the first model. The model as a whole is statistically
significant with an F-statistic of 3.176 (df=14; P<.001). R-square is .121 which is
fairly weak, explaining about 12% of the variance in procedural justice. Three of
fourteen variables in the model are statistically significant at the .05 alpha level.
Consistent with the fifth hypothesis, police use of force is statistically significant
46
in this model (p<.01) and has a slope coefficient of -1.326. Police use of force or
police threatened use of force is estimated to reduce perceived procedural justice
scores by 1.326. A possible explanation for this is that the threat or use of force
by police during the recent arrest was viewed by the arrestee as unwarranted.
Being male is also statistically significant in the model (p<.01). Males are more
likely to hold perceptions of procedural justice than females by a difference of
1.244 on the 18 point scale. Drug use is significant as well (p<.001).
Table 2 OLS Regression Predicting Procedural Justice
Procedural Justice Unstandardized Coefficients
Standardized Coefficients
T Sig. B Std.
Error Beta 1 (Constant) 8.130 0.944 8.613 0.000
Use of Force -1.326 0.504 -0.145 -2.632 0.009 Police Initiated Contact
0.891 0.516 0.092 1.727 0.085
Number of Arrests -0.058 0.112 -0.028 -0.516 0.606 African-American -0.900 0.577 -0.086 -1.559 0.120 Hispanic -0.310 0.464 -0.039 -0.669 0.504 Age 0.011 0.019 0.033 0.591 0.555 Gang Membership -0.204 0.606 -0.019 -0.336 0.737 Mental Health -0.276 0.488 -0.032 -0.566 0.572 Education -0.242 0.191 -0.070 -1.267 0.206 Employment 0.389 0.422 0.053 0.922 0.357 Income 0.001 0.000 -0.012 -0.220 0.826 Gender 1.244 0.468 0.146 2.659 0.008 Drug Use -0.044 0.012 -0.199 -3.540 0.000 Victimization 0.005 0.010 0.030 0.542 0.588
Dependent Variable: Procedural Justice
Each additional drug used in the past 30 days is associated with a .044
lower procedural justice score. This may be because recreational drug users view
47
drug laws and drug enforcement as unjustified, or may view their drug use as
victimless, or that such laws and enforcement encroach on their personal
freedoms. Ethnicity is not statistically significant in this model. Also inconsistent
with the hypotheses, police-initiated contact is not statistically significant.
The next model in the analysis regresses the legitimacy scale on
independent variables using ordinary least squares regression. Table 3 displays
the results of the regression model. The model as a whole is statistically
significant with an observed F-statistic of 2.386 (df=14; P<.01). The R-square
value is .094, which is weak. Only about 9% of the variance in legitimacy is
explained by the model, which may be expected in a model predicting legitimacy
where there is no predictor measuring procedural justice. Three of fourteen
variables reach statistical significance at the .05 alpha level. Police use or
threatened use of force is statistically significant and has the effect of reducing
legitimacy .736 points on the 15-point scale (p<.05). Being African-American
also has a decreasing effect on perceptions of legitimacy by 1.267 points (p<.01).
This finding is consistent with the third and fifth hypotheses, although being
Hispanic was not statistically significant. Drug use is also statistically significant
(p<.01). For each additional occurrence of drug use in the past 30 days,
legitimacy scores decline by .026 points. Inconsistent with the fourth hypothesis,
police-initiated contact is not statistically significant.
Table 4 shows the full model regression output of legitimacy working
through procedural justice. In this model, legitimacy is the dependent variable
and procedural justice is added to model as an independent variable.
48
Table 3 OLS Regression Predicting Legitimacy
Legitimacy
Unstandardized Coefficients
Standardized Coefficients
t Sig. B Std. Error Beta 1 (Constant) 7.734 0.698 11.088 0.000
Use of Force -0.736 0.372 -0.111 -1.976 0.049 Police Initiated Contact
0.350 0.381 0.050 0.918 0.359
Number of Arrests
-0.099 0.082 -0.067 -1.203 0.230
African-American
-1.267 0.426 -0.167 -2.971 0.003
Hispanic -0.029 0.343 -0.005 -0.085 0.932 Age 0.006 0.014 0.026 0.468 0.640 Gang Membership
-0.255 0.448 -0.032 -0.569 0.570
Mental Health -0.263 0.360 -0.042 -0.731 0.466 Education 0.002 0.141 0.001 0.014 0.989 Employment -0.101 0.312 -0.019 -0.324 0.746 Income 0.001 0.000 -0.005 -0.083 0.934 Gender 0.618 0.346 0.100 1.789 0.075 Drug Use -0.026 0.009 -0.158 -2.782 0.006 Victimization -0.001 0.007 -0.011 -0.202 0.840
Dependent Variable: Legitimacy
This model tests if legitimacy is produced by procedural justice. The
model as a whole is a good fit and is statistically significant with an F-statistic of
34.674 (df=15; P<.001). Adding the procedural justice scale variable to the
model significantly increases the explained variance in legitimacy. The model
performs well with an R-square value of .618. Almost 62% of the variance in
legitimacy is explained in this model. The previous model excluding procedural
49
justice only explained about 9% of the variance in legitimacy. This model
including procedural justice supports the hypothesis that legitimacy works
through procedural justice. The procedural justice variable is statistically
significant in this model (p<.001). More specifically, an increase of 1 point on
the procedural justice scale is associated with a .562 point positive change on the
legitimacy scale. The two scales do not use the same metric.
Table 4 OLS Regression Predicting Legitimacy through Procedural Justice
Legitimacy through Procedural Justice
Unstandardized Coefficients
Standardized Coefficients
T Sig. B Std.
Error Beta 1 (Constant) 3.163 0.503 6.289 0.000
Use of Force 0.010 0.245 0.001 0.040 0.968 Police Initiated Contact
-0.151 0.249 -0.021 -0.606 0.545
Number of Arrests -0.067 0.054 -0.045 -1.247 0.213 African-American -0.761 0.278 -0.100 -2.736 0.007 Hispanic 0.145 0.223 0.025 0.652 0.515 Age 0.000 0.009 0.001 0.029 0.977 Gang Membership -0.140 0.291 -0.018 -0.482 0.630 Mental Health -0.108 0.234 -0.017 -0.461 0.645 Education 0.138 0.092 0.055 1.500 0.135 Employment -0.320 0.203 -0.060 -1.575 0.116 Income 0.001 0.000 0.005 0.129 0.898 Gender -0.081 0.227 -0.013 -0.355 0.722 Drug Use -0.001 0.006 -0.005 -0.134 0.893 Victimization -0.004 0.005 -0.035 -0.945 0.345 Procedural Justice 0.562 0.027 0.773 21.001 0.000
Dependent Variable: Legitimacy
50
The legitimacy scale ranges from 0 to 15 while the procedural justice scale ranges
from 0 to 18, so the standardized coefficient better captures the relationship. One
standard deviation increase in procedural justice predicts a standard deviation
increase of .773 in legitimacy. The only other predictor that is statistically
significant in this model is the being African-American (p<.01.) The coefficient
for the variable is -.761 which is a smaller effect than was found in the previous
legitimacy model that does not include procedural justice. This suggests that
procedural justice mediates the effect of ethnicity on legitimacy, supporting the
third hypothesis. Police use of force and drug use are not significant in the full
model and when controlling for procedural justice, use of force does not predict
legitimacy. Procedural justice accounts for the variance explained in legitimacy
that was previously explained by police use of force and drug use.
Next, a logistic regression model was employed to predict the cooperation
with police dependent variable. This alternative analytic approach was used
because there is a slight abnormality in the distribution of the dependent variable,
where the data points are censored by the scale. The binary analysis predicts the
lack of cooperation. The uncooperative category is coded as 1 and the
cooperative category is coded as 0. Table 5 shows the output of the regression
analysis. The model is statistically significant and has a Negelkerke R-square of
.222 (p<.001). A total of 22.2% of the variance in cooperation is explained by the
model. Drug use is statistically significant in this model (p<.05). Each additional
drug used per day in the past month increases the odds of being uncooperative by
2%. The inhibiting effects of using mind altering substances may contribute to
51
this finding, as well as the users’ beliefs concerning the unfairness or moral
validity of drug laws. Gender (male) is also statistically significant where males
are more than twice as likely to be uncooperative than females (p<.05). This may
be expected considering that males are more likely to be combative.
Table 5 Logistic Regression Predicting Noncooperation B S.E. Wald df Sig. Exp(B)
Step 1a Victimization 0.009 0.007 1.806 1 0.179 1.010 Drug Use 0.019 0.009 4.646 1 0.031 1.019 Gender 0.849 0.409 4.315 1 0.038 2.336 Income 0.000 0.000 4.015 1 0.045 1.000 Employment -0.960 0.336 8.169 1 0.004 0.383 Education -0.140 0.161 0.759 1 0.384 0.869 Mental Health -0.130 0.370 0.123 1 0.726 0.878 Gang Membership 0.079 0.420 0.036 1 0.850 1.083 Age -0.009 0.015 0.385 1 0.535 0.991 Hispanic 0.503 0.351 2.056 1 0.152 1.653 African-American -0.049 0.477 0.011 1 0.918 0.952 Number of Arrests 0.175 0.084 4.393 1 0.036 1.192 Police Initiated Contact 0.738 0.461 2.562 1 0.109 2.091 Use of Force 0.974 0.345 7.982 1 0.005 2.648 Constant -2.749 0.811 11.48 1 0.001 0.064
Dependent Variable: Noncooperation
Having legitimate employment, at least part-time, is also statistically
significant and reduces the likelihood of being uncooperative by a factor of two
(1.0/.383=2.61;p<.01). The number of arrests during the last year is also
statistically significant (p<.05). Each additional arrest is associated with a 20%
increase in the likelihood of being uncooperative with the police. Police use of
force or threatened use of force is significant and increases the likelihood of being
uncooperative by about160% (p<.01). This may be because some arrestees feel
52
that force was unwarranted, and as noted in the review, when police introduce
competitive or confrontational attitudes into the interaction the arrestee may
respond with a competitive gesture.
Table 6 shows the results of a binary logistic regression where procedural
justice and legitimacy are added to the earlier model. The model is statistically
significant (p<.001) and the Negelkerke R-square is increased to .364. Thus, the
model explains 36.4% of the variance in cooperation with police. Adding the
procedural justice and legitimacy variables increased the predictive power of the
model by about 14%.
Table 6 Logistic Regression Predicting Noncooperation through Procedural Justice and
Legitimacy B S.E. Wald Df Sig. Exp(B)
Step 1a
Victimization 0.011 0.007 2.460 1 0.117 1.011 Drug Use 0.009 0.010 0.824 1 0.364 1.009 Gender 1.228 0.456 7.260 1 0.007 3.414 Income 0.000 0.000 2.851 1 0.091 1.000 Employment -0.926 0.358 6.691 1 0.010 0.396 Education -0.191 0.173 1.219 1 0.270 0.826 Mental Health -0.267 0.405 0.435 1 0.510 0.766 Gang Membership 0.054 0.454 0.014 1 0.906 1.055 Age -0.009 0.016 0.326 1 0.568 0.991 Hispanic 0.481 0.380 1.599 1 0.206 1.618 African-American -0.492 0.525 0.876 1 0.349 0.612 Number of Arrests 0.195 0.102 3.671 1 0.055 1.215 Police Initiated Contact
0.849 0.472 3.234 1 0.072 2.338
Use of Force 0.675 0.378 3.197 1 0.074 1.965 Legitimacy Scale -0.198 0.093 4.589 1 0.032 0.820 Procedural Justice -0.149 0.072 4.259 1 0.039 0.862 Constant -0.194 0.954 0.041 1 0.839 0.824
Dependent Variable: Noncooperation
53
Interestingly, drug use, income, arrests, and use of force are no longer significant
in this full model. Procedural justice and legitimacy have a mediating effect on
cooperation with the police. Gender remains statistically significant (p<.01). In
this model, males are over three times more likely to be uncooperative than
females. Again, males are more likely to be combative. Employment is also
statistically significant (p<.05). Being employed reduces the odds of being
uncooperative by over two times. Procedural justice and legitimacy are both
statistically significant (p<.05) and account for the variance previously explained
by non-significant predictors. An additional one point increase in the scale of
perceived procedural justice reduces the likelihood of being uncooperative by
16% (1.0/.862=1.160). An additional point increase in the legitimacy scale
decreases the odds of being uncooperative by 22% (1.0/.820=1.219). This
suggests that an arrestee will be more inclined to cooperate with the police if they
view the police as legitimate, and have procedurally just interactions with police
officers.
Binary logistic regression was used to predict noncompliance with the
law. Like the models above, a limited model predicted the dependent variable
without procedural justice and legitimacy, then a full model predicting
noncompliance to the law that included those variables concludes the analysis in
this thesis. Table 7 shows the output for the limited model and table 8 shows the
output for the full model. Neither of the models are significant nor do they have
any statistically significant predictors, which is contrary to the second hypothesis.
54
Table 7 Logistic Regression Predicting Noncompliance
B S.E. Wald df Sig. Exp(B)
Step 1a Victimization 0.007 0.006 1.281 1 0.258 1.007
Drug Use -0.009 0.012 0.594 1 0.441 0.991
Gender 0.046 0.452 0.010 1 0.920 1.047
Income 0.000 0.000 0.183 1 0.669 1.000
Employment -0.436 0.416 1.095 1 0.295 0.647
Education -0.208 0.200 1.073 1 0.300 0.812
Mental Health
-0.174 0.468 0.137 1 0.711 0.841
Gang Membership
0.438 0.507 0.746 1 0.388 1.550
Age -0.009 0.018 0.256 1 0.613 0.991
Hispanic 0.115 0.443 0.068 1 0.795 1.122
African-American
0.361 0.525 0.474 1 0.491 1.435
Number of Arrests
0.115 0.075 2.356 1 0.125 1.122
Police Initiated Contact
-0.146 0.475 0.094 1 0.759 0.864
Use of Force 0.558 0.429 1.693 1 0.193 1.746
Constant -1.716 0.880 3.799 1 0.051 0.180
Dependent Variable: Noncompliance
The first model has a Negelkerke R-square of .067 meaning that only 6.7% of the
variance in noncompliance is explained by the limited model. Such is a poor
performance. The full model that includes procedural justice and legitimacy has a
Negelkerke R-square of .093 which means that adding procedural justice and
legitimacy to the model only increased the variance explained in noncompliance
by 2.6%. The model does not predict noncompliance well. This result may be
because voluntary compliance to the law is more related to variables not included
in the data used in this study.
55
Table 8 Logistic Regression Predicting Noncompliance through Procedural Justice and
Legitimacy B S.E. Wald df Sig. Exp(B)
Step 1a Victimization 0.008 0.007 1.389 1 0.239 1.008 Drug Use -0.005 0.012 0.168 1 0.682 0.995 Gender -0.064 0.46 0.019 1 0.890 0.938 Income 0.000 0.000 0.104 1 0.748 1.000 Employment -0.435 0.422 1.062 1 0.303 0.647 Education -0.212 0.205 1.065 1 0.302 0.809 Mental Health -0.159 0.474 0.112 1 0.738 0.853 Gang Membership
0.448 0.513 0.762 1 0.383 1.565
Age -0.012 0.019 0.409 1 0.523 0.988 Hispanic 0.174 0.448 0.150 1 0.698 1.189 African-American
0.611 0.543 1.265 1 0.261 1.841
Number of Arrests
0.135 0.078 3.028 1 0.082 1.145
Police Initiated Contact
-0.183 0.482 0.144 1 0.705 0.833
Use of Force 0.660 0.439 2.255 1 0.133 1.934 Procedural Justice
0.019 0.080 0.056 1 0.814 1.019
Legitimacy 0.140 0.111 1.578 1 0.209 1.150 Constant -2.976 1.087 7.492 1 0.006 0.051
Dependent Variable: Noncompliance
56
Chapter 5
DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION
Research on procedural justice shows clearly that the interpersonal
processes and dynamics involved in an interaction between citizens and agents of
the criminal justice system matter and have serious consequences. The
desirability of those consequences is contingent on whether the interaction is
perceived as fair, sincere, and equitable or not. This study further expands our
understanding of procedural justice by examining a sample of individuals from
the arrestee population in Maricopa County, Arizona. Arrestee samples have not
been adequately studied in the literature on procedural justice. This population is
important because the role of procedural justice may differ between the
individuals in the general population and individuals who have been arrested.
Something may be different for people who have more frequent interactions with
the police, and it is reasonable to assume that arrestees have more interactions
with criminal justice system agents that the general population.
Partial support for the hypotheses is found in this study. Only partial
support of the existing literature was also found in this study. Police use or
threatened use of force was found to lower arrestees’ perceptions of procedural
justice. This may occur because some citizens involved in contacts where the
police used force or threatened to use force consider the level of force as
unnecessary, excessive, and unjustified. Contrary to much of the literature,
ethnicity and police-initiated contacts did not reach statistical significance in the
analysis where procedural justice was predicted as the dependent variable.
57
Consistent with prior research, this analysis found that males are more likely than
females to view their interactions with the police as procedurally fair. Women
appear to be more critical when making judgments about how they have been
treated by authority figures.
Unexpectedly, drug use played a significant role in the models predicting
procedural justice and legitimacy. Several explanations may be considered. It
may be that some drug users believe drug laws and enforcement are unfair, and
violate their personal liberties. It could also be that the behavior altering effects
of narcotics impact the outcome variable in question. Future research may
consider examining why drug use matters in forming perceptions of procedural
justice.
The analysis also shows that police legitimacy works through procedural
justice, which supports the first hypothesis. The model testing police legitimacy
without the procedural justice included in the model performed weakly. Including
the procedural justice variable increased the model’s performance substantially.
Procedural justice also mitigated the effect of ethnicity on views of police
legitimacy. African-American arrestees tend to have less favorable views of
police legitimacy than Caucasians; however, the effect is diminished when
procedurally just experiences are taken into account. The first legitimacy model
did not include procedural justice as part of the independent variables. In this
model, police use of force and drug use reached statistical significance. When the
model included procedural justice, however, use of force and drug use were no
longer significant. Police use of force does not predict legitimacy within and of
58
itself. The effect went away when procedural justice was added to the model. It
is suggested that if the offender viewed the use or threatened use of force as
unwarranted then use of force is associated with lower levels of legitimacy, but if
the offender behaved in a way that induced police use of force and believed
he/she deserved the level of force used in the contact then the model indicates that
use of force does not predict views of legitimacy. This suggests that procedural
justice has a powerful effect on forming perceptions of police legitimacy even in
the case of police use of force, and that the other variables that help to explain
procedural justice only indirectly impact legitimacy through this procedural
justice variable.
When predicting lack of cooperation, several predictors were important
when procedural justice and legitimacy were excluded from the model. Drug use,
use of force, gender (male), and number of arrests were all associated with being
uncooperative with the police. Individuals who are legally employed are expected
to be more cooperative than those who are not. More importantly, though, is
procedural justice and legitimacy. Similar to the findings in the general
population, the effects of procedural just encounters and views of legitimacy are
strongly associated with cooperation during police encounters within the arrestee
population. The data used in this thesis shows that within the arrestee population,
a five point increase on views of procedural justice or legitimacy scales, or a
combination of the two, leads to an almost certain likelihood of cooperating with
the police. This finding is congruent to similar findings within the general
population
59
Contrary to the second hypothesis and the bulk of the prior research, this
analysis did not find any statistically significant variables predicting
noncompliance. Most of the research with samples drawn from both the general
and prisoner populations has consistent findings showing that legitimacy predicts
voluntary compliance with the law. This analysis did not have such results, which
is problematic for this study. Several things may help explain the unexpected
findings. There could be measurement error or some other deficiencies in the data
concerning the compliance variable. It may be that other variables not measured
in the data used here are more related to voluntary compliance to the law.
Informal social controls like social bonds may be the main reason why the
arrestee population abstains from drinking in public and littering, etc. Respect for
the environment may be the real reason why people do not litter, and that not
littering has little to do with how people are treated by justice system agents. It
could also be that peoples’ concern for their own well being influence their
driving habits that are conducive to lawful driving and not a fear of sanctions or
duty to obey traffic laws.
Surprisingly, ethnicity had little effect in this research. The ethnicity
variable (Hispanic) never reached statistical significance and the effect sizes for
African-Americans were lower than expected. Police-initiated contact did not
reach statistical significance in this analysis, which is contrary to the fourth
hypothesis and much of the research. It could be that arrestees are affected by
police initiated contacts differently than other populations because they had more
recent contacts with system representatives. However, it is generally recognized
60
that police-initiated contacts versus citizen-initiated contacts are more conducive
to distributive justice research. Gang membership also had no discernable effect
in this analysis. This suggests that the common stereotypes of gang members as
being uncooperative, cynical law breakers may be misguided. Age also had a null
effect, which sometimes had shown to be important in procedural justice research
(Tyler, 1990).
In the past several decades, our justice system has experienced an
increased use of deterrence-based methods and policies to “get tough” on
criminals. Policies such as truth in sentencing laws and three strikes laws have
gained popularity in the public and legislatures, as well as policies that harshly
punish minor offenses like drug-related crimes. The guiding philosophy has been
that getting tough on criminals will deter them from committing more crimes
because the punishment for their indiscretions will be so great that no one will
want to reoffend for fear of being caught and punished severely. Because of these
stern punishment tactics, there has been an increase in the incarceration rate in the
United States. Our county has more prisoners than China but only a fraction of
the population and America has more prisoners per capita than any other Western
industrialized country (Tonry, 2004). Many of these incarcerated individuals
have been directed to the supervision of the booming private, for-profit prison
industry. This strategy has cost the American tax payers a great expense while
not reducing crime equivocally. Some criminologists tend to agree that such
punitive sentencing strategies are both ineffective and inefficient (Tyler, 1990).
Generally speaking, these policies do not work very well and cost a fortune. They
61
can also have unintended and dangerous effects like increasing levels of violence
in communities and correctional institutions (see Pratt, 2008; Addicted to
Incarceration).
Similar to penal efforts, policing strategies have also been poised within a
“get tough” and “zero tolerance” framework over the past several decades.
Municipalities all over the country have implemented policies and practices that
aggressively enforce minor offenses as a way to deter or discourage people from
committing more serious crimes in the future. Local cities and towns have tried
to quell crime rates by flooding areas with patrol officers. The likely threat of
arrest is thought to steer city dwellers clear of criminal conduct. This tactic of
crime control has not fared so well and these policy approaches have been
ineffectual. Realistic increases or reductions in police patrol saturation do not
affect calls for police service and a rapid response to calls by police also does not
affect crime (Kelling et. al., 1974; Skogan, 1990). As noted earlier, mandatory
arrest policies for domestic violence have questionable results. Weisburd and Eck
(2004) conclude that there is little evidence supporting the idea that the standard,
deterrence-based model of policing will lead to safer communities.
It is more appropriate to think of the police as crime responders than
crime preventers. Police rarely experience crimes in progress. Crime is a
complex sociological problem with a litany of causal factors, most of which are
structural and situational factors that formal crime control institutions have little
control over, although new models of policing, such as problem-oriented policing,
have shown promising results. It has also been shown that the police cannot
62
effectively do their job without cooperation from the public. Research on
procedural justice suggests that a better way to get public cooperation with the
police is to always treat citizens with fairness and concern for their well-being
(Tyler, 1990).
“Get tough” policies based on the deterrence model are politically popular.
The justice system in the United States is overseen by officials and policy makers
who act in accordance with their constituents’ will and interests regardless
whether or not those interests are validated by empirical research. As Dr. Jerry
Ratcliffe has noted (ASU lecture series, 2011), “When we get the politics out of
policing, we’ll get much better policing.” The same could be said about other
components of the criminal justice system. Perhaps getting “smart” on crime
would be better than getting “tough” on crime. Certainly, offenders need to be
punished for misconduct, albeit fairly and commensurate with the seriousness of
the act. It is being argued here that fear is not the best and most efficient way to
coax obedience, but that the procedural justice alternative is a better model to
accomplish voluntary compliance and cooperation with the law because fewer
resources are required, offenders are not further marginalized, and the research
suggests that it works.
There are several factors that can negatively impact perceptions of
authority figures, produce less favorable views of legitimacy, and reduce
voluntary compliance and cooperation with authorities’ directives. Police
brutality and wrongful convictions are certainly unfair and have lingering effects,
and they have undesired consequences associated with them in communities. The
63
public also has unrealistic expectations of the criminal justice system which also
contributes to less favorable perceptions of the justice system and its
representatives. As discussed earlier, disreputable events of police misconduct
like the beating of Rodney King have damaging effects on perceptions and reduce
support for the police, even though they are statistically rare. Technology has
enabled the public to record videos with cell phones and instantaneously post
those videos to the internet. As a result, the world-wide-web is littered with
amateur videos of police misconduct and abuses of authority for the world to see.
Police officers have been known to, albeit on rare occasion, steal from people
where a person is “suspected” of dealing drugs and upon a search the police find
cash (but no drugs) on the person and the cash is confiscated on the assumption
that it is drug money. Police have also been known to put “suspects” in the back
of squad cars and instead of taking them to the police station they take the
individuals to a potentially dangerous part of the town and abandon them
(Brunson, 2005.) Such behavior is not conducive to trusting attitudes.
Wrongful convictions are also a source of cynicism towards the criminal
justice system. Sending the wrong person to prison means that the true offender
goes free and that an innocent person has been incarcerated at the tax payers’
expense. Wrongful convictions tend to be the result of false or coerced
confessions, false testimony, over-zealous prosecutors, and careless juries. Gross
and associates (2004) studied exonerations in the United States between 1989 and
2003. They found 328 exonerations, some posthumously, of innocent people who
had been wrongfully convicted of crimes. The sample as a whole had spent over
64
3400 years in prison. The study focused primarily on murder cases because of the
seriousness of the crime and the fatal implications of the sentence. By their
estimation, however, there could be as many as 10,000 or more people wrongfully
sentenced to prison when considering the myriad crimes that carry a prison
sentence. One of the most salient cases discussed in this piece concerns a
mentally handicapped woman in Alabama. She had confessed to killing her baby
despite the fact that she was medically incapable of having children. As a result,
she was convicted and imprisoned. It is not surprising that some Americans are
skeptical of the legitimacy of the American justice system.
The media has an uncanny way of changing reality. There are dozens of
police dramas, forensic shows, and programs on television that depict the
“realities” of the criminal justice system. These programs depict the justice
system in unrealistic ways and in some cases can present the system as a source of
injustice. Gaeta (2010) critiques the role of the media in relation to the criminal
justice system and concludes that the popular media’s portrayal of the system is
flawed and can have detrimental effects. Television programming is interested in
ratings and viewership, not accuracy, the law, and justice.
Agents of the criminal justice system should take every precaution to
guard against biased and inequitable actions whether they are in the domain of the
police, the prosecutor’s office, the courts, or prisons because such events can
degrade the public’s confidence in the fundamental institutions of justice. Police
and detention officer academies should stress the importance of procedural justice
to new recruits. When misconduct is discovered, agency managers should take
65
proactive steps to rectify the problem. The public should be able to directly
communicate with justice system agents, and those agents should take the public
concerns seriously. The research makes clear that procedural justice leads to
legitimacy. Also, voluntary compliance and cooperation with authorities is more
likely when procedural justice and legitimacy are present. Undoubtedly,
voluntary compliance and cooperation with the law is the most efficient way to
deal with crime problems. When criminal justice system actors collaborate in
media programming, they should take steps to ensure that the mandates of the
justice system supersede those of the media. When the goals of the law and the
media are the same, the media can be a powerful tool in fighting crime.
This study contributes to the extant research on procedural justice. The
findings tend to further substantiate previous research by examining a sample not
taken from the general public. The sample used here is drawn from an arrestee
population, which is understated in the current procedural justice literature. The
sample was generated randomly so the findings can be extrapolated to the arrestee
population within Maricopa County. The sample size is fairly large providing
adequate statistical power as well. The current study used a cross-sectional
design, so a causal time-ordering cannot be established. It can also be the case
that voluntarily cooperating with the law leads to views of legitimacy and
procedural justice, so the results should be interpreted cautiously. For example,
police use of force was found to be a significant predictor in several models in
this thesis, but because the data is cross-sectional and a time-order sequence has
not been established it could be the case that some individuals harbor lower
66
perceptions of procedural justice that leads them to behave in a way that increased
the likelihood of police using force against them during a contact. Longitudinal
designs should be used in future research to establish proper time-order causality.
Future research should also consider using samples from arrestee populations
from across the United States to provide cross population generalizability. This
study is only generalizable to the local arrestee population in Maricopa County.
Future research should also consider gathering data from both an arrestee
population and a general population with the same instruments to determine if
arrestees and citizens from the general population differ on procedural justice
measures.
Procedural justice is not a general theory of behavior. It is a theoretical
concept. It deals specifically with one aspect of behavior, namely interactions
with authorities and the consequences thereof. The current platform of
criminological theory may be convoluted with several theories. It may suit the
field well to consolidate specific theoretical concepts into well established general
theories of crime and test those concepts in the larger framework of general
theories.
Concepts within Angew’s (1992) general strain theory (GST) could absorb
procedural justice quite well. In short, GST states that personal strains and anger
inducing events cause negative emotions, and then illegitimate processes are used
to mediate that strain. GST is one of the leading theories in criminology and it
owns a substantial body of empirical support (see Baron, 2004; Paternoster and
Mazerolle, 1994; Moon et. al., 2009; Aseltine, Gore, and Gordon, 2000). Three
67
typologies of strain inducing events exist. The first is the failure to achieve
positively valued stimuli. There can be a disjunction between an individual’s
aspirations and actual outcomes, a discrepancy between someone’s expectations
and actual outcomes, or a disconnect between fair outcomes and actual outcomes.
The other two typologies are the removal of positively valued stimuli, and the
presence of negatively valued stimuli. It is the disjunction between fair outcomes
and actual outcomes in GST that can be most readily integrated with procedural
justice in terms of criminological research.
CONCLUSION
In conclusion, this study reviewed literature on public perceptions,
procedural justice, legitimacy, compliance, and cooperation. Common themes
found in the literature are that damaging events of legal system misconduct affect
public perceptions of the system; and that voluntary compliance and cooperation
with the law is influenced by views of legitimacy. Procedural justice is key in
developing views of legitimacy in both the general and offender populations.
Results of this analysis show that legitimacy works through procedural
justice, and procedural justice mitigates the effects of ethnicity, drug use, and use
of force on views of legitimacy. Cooperation with the police is enhanced when
citizens hold more favorable views of procedural justice and police legitimacy.
This thesis used data collected from an arrestee population which has not been
68
examined in the procedural justice literature. Additional studies should use
samples drawn from arrestee and offender populations.
Authority figures should always be concerned about the fairness and
integrity of the interactions they have with citizens and subordinates. Whether
social interactions occur within the context of the law, with a manager, a teacher,
or a business associate, people expect to be treated fairly and with dignity. When
they are treated accordingly they are more likely to voluntarily comply and
cooperate with the directives of authority figures.
69
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